Some Ghost updates....
Competition I used a 23inch .22 barrel in the Ghost for the benchrest portion of the recent Extreme Field Target Grand Prix in Williams, AZ a few weeks ago. This was a combined benchrest/high power ft event. One of the cards I shot from the Ghost was a 211 and the second was a 218, for a total of 429. The highest single card was shot by
@5Power, a 228 (also shot by a Ghost). And the 1st place for the two card aggregate was always-tough-to-beat, John Bagakis, with a 439. My 429 put in in 7th place for the EBR portion of the event, and that score, coupled with 1st place in the extreme field target portion (shot with a different gun) got me a paycheck for 3rd overall for the weekend (2x100 yard EBR cards + score from the EFT course x2 days).
From the .22 Ghost I used the .22 Grands @ 960-965fps. Reg was set at 150bar, power wheel on MAX. Barrel is 1:30 twist, choked, and one of the variations of OEM Ghost barrels. Something to be said of home court advantage b/c with that setup I'm averaging 100 yard EBR scores in the 230 area in my back yard where I have a better grasp of the wind. To get that tune I need the 0.051" wire hammer spring, and the current production (heavier) hammer. It maxes out at 980fps with the 28.55gr Grands and a reg pressure of 165bar, but is just as accurate at 960-965 and lower reg pressure.
Fun A few days ago I had some family in town and asked this brother in law if he was interested in some prairie dog shooting. He enthusiastically said yes. He has some experience shooting, but not a lot, and certainly none behind a high magnification scope and a highly precise gun like a modern high-end PCP. So I mentally went through my options for him....and settled on the Taipan Veteran, mostly because it has magazines and because I thought the simple 20x fixed power scope would simplify that aspect. So the Vet got placed in his hands first. He STRUGGLED to get in the eyebox of that scope for the first 15-20 minutes. At that point I had him try the Ghost with the .20 barrel and slugs and explained that he would have to single feed them. We turned the scope mag down to 6x and he started dropping dogs! After the first 8-10 shots he had it figured out and was quickly asking me to range specific dogs for him so that he could reference the dope sheet taped to the bottle. From that point on he was self-sufficient. We spent a couple hours, killing 40-50 and enjoying the heck out of ourselves. His farthest was a 154 yarder and he got it on the second shot. Those .20/18.9grain slugs are amazing. He eventually used up the 80ish slugs I had brought and we swapped over to the .20/15.89 JSB pellets and I told him to use the other column on the dope sheet. No prob, he was killing dogs with the pellets just as readily. He kept commenting how cool the Ghost is and how much fun he was having and how he had no idea airguns were capable of this. It was fun to see somebody experience the fun for the first time.
Later that evening we were all hanging out in my backyard and he was telling his 16 year old son about earlier. I asked 16 year old nephew if he'd like to shoot the Ghost....and got another enthusiastic yes. So, out comes the .20 Ghost and the slugs. He proceeded to spend about 40 minutes working over my steel paddles. I've got them from 40-90 yards in 10 yard increments, and then some more at 130 yards. Initially he was yanking the trigger but I talked him through that and he started to connect. His best was connecting on the 2.5" paddle at 130 yards on the 3rd shot. He was also pretty impressed by the whole experience.
Overall it was fun to witness the joy of sending accurate projectiles out of an airgun for the first time. They definitely got to jump straight to the champagne version of airgunning, bypassing all the budget guns and springers and going straight to the good stuff.
will shoot 13’s @ 810 1/2” @ 50
